PORT ANGELES. Long before a Clallam County court ordered Anthony Tomashefsky to stop stalking and harassing Benjamin Mavy, Tomashefsky stood on the other side of the caption, asking the same court system for protection from Mavy. The court heard his case in full, and denied it.
Court records in Tomashefsky v. Mavy, Clallam County Superior Court No. 23-2-00372-05, show that Tomashefsky petitioned for a full anti-harassment protection order against Mavy in 2023. This was not a counter-petition to some earlier case; by the court's own docket, it came first, two years before Mavy filed his successful 2025 petition.
A full hearing, with lawyers, on video
The court's denial order, filed with the Clallam County Clerk at 11:20 a.m. on July 28, 2023, records that the request was not waved off on a technicality. "The court held a hearing before issuing this denial order," the form states, and its attendance boxes show a fully contested proceeding: the protected person attended by video, his lawyer attended by video, the restrained person attended by video, and the restrained person's lawyer attended by video.
Tomashefsky, in other words, had everything due process offers a petitioner: a scheduled hearing, counsel at his side, and a judicial officer willing to listen. The order is signed by judicial officer Simon Barnhart and dated July 28, 2023, at 11:01 a.m.
The finding
On the form's findings section, the court checked box F: "Insufficient evidence." The printed finding reads: "A preponderance of the evidence does not support issuing any type of protection order that this court has authority to issue."
The order section then records the disposition: "Denied on the merits after a hearing and dismissed. The request for a full order is denied and the petition is dismissed." The order further states that any previously entered temporary order under the case number expired upon signing, indicating the dispute had been before the court in some form even earlier. Because the petition was denied, the order marks service on the restrained person as not required: "The petition was denied and service is not required." And the court checked the box reading: "No further court hearings are scheduled in this case."
That was the end of it. There is no order restraining Mavy, no finding of harassment by Mavy, and no appeal noted in the materials reviewed for this article. The case closed where it was heard: in a courtroom where Tomashefsky had every opportunity to prove his claims, and did not.
The contrast that matters
Two years later, the same two men returned to the same courthouse with the roles reversed. In August 2025, Mavy petitioned for a stalking and anti-harassment protection order against Tomashefsky in case No. 25-2-00595-05. This time, according to the court record, Tomashefsky appeared at the August 12 temporary-order hearing, where he was given "an opportunity to say why an order should not issue," in the words of Judge W. Brent Basden's later opinion, and then did not appear at the August 26 full hearing at all. The order was granted in his absence and remains in effect through August 26, 2027.
The juxtaposition is entirely a matter of court record. In 2023, Tomashefsky alleged harassment by Mavy, received a full hearing with counsel present, and a judicial officer found the evidence insufficient and dismissed his petition on the merits. In 2025, Mavy alleged stalking and harassment by Tomashefsky, and two judicial officers, Commissioner Brian Parker at the hearing, Judge Basden on revision, found the evidence sufficient, Basden writing that "the record amply supports the conclusion that Respondent has engaged in this behavior."
One man sought the court's protection and failed to prove his case. The other sought the court's protection and proved his. The difference, the record shows, was not the forum, it was the evidence.
Why this history matters now
Tomashefsky operates olympicherald.com, a website that publishes articles attacking, among others, the judge who denied his revision motion and the commissioner who granted Mavy's order. His public commentary casts the Clallam County courts as hostile to him. The 2023 denial order complicates that narrative in a way no editorial could: when he was the petitioner, the court gave him a hearing, weighed his evidence, and ruled against him on the merits. The system he now criticizes is the same one that once sat patiently through his own case, and found it wanting.
This article relies on public court records and public complaints. TROH welcomes a response from Mr. Tomashefsky and will publish it in full.